


The Many Faces of Christopher Buchanon

by Charlie_Parker



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Lots of Original Characters - Freeform, Not everyone makes it out of these chapters alive, Not your mother's fanfiction, slow build-ish, trying my best to make it fo real
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:01:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 19,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6758827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie_Parker/pseuds/Charlie_Parker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle of New York in the summer of 2012, socio-economic fallout was bound to happen. Taking responsibility for the effects of this mass attack, a certain agency operates in the dark and creates small departments in charge of taking care of sections of New York. But who is taking care of Hell's Kitchen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. More Than One Way To Skin A Bear

“I want names, Bershov.”   
A harsh light paneled the ceiling of the interrogation room. It was the kind that easily wore out patience and clarity.   
“And what will you do for these names, Miss…?” The man at the table rose a brow. Artyom Bershov was a middle-aged man from Cherepovets, Russia. He leaned over the cold metal table, wrists bound by cuffs to the table, squinting his characteristically Aryan eyes at the woman standing strongly in front of him. Her arms were crossed and the displeased look on her face did nothing to stop the man from acting as slimy as the few hairs left at the crown of his head, its more voluminous counterpart inching its way down his neck.   
“That’s Agent None-of-your-business to you.” The woman replied. Seeing Bershov’s facial expression¬¬– his pleasure in crawling under her skin like a cockroach under a rug– was just prolonging the process of interrogation. The Agent’s face went soft, finding compassion in the man supposed to be her enemy.   
Artyom Bershov was recruited by the Russian mob in Hell’s Kitchen, New York when he was 17. He’d flown over to the United States in order to find work to send money to his family still stuck in Russia. The crusade of the Russian mob appealed to the young Artyom, alone in the world and finding no pride in his nationality except there. A few years later, his mother would pass away from ovarian cancer that had gone undetected. The Bershovs couldn’t have afforded a visit to the doctor when it was necessary and even then, paying for the surgical removal of the tumor was out of the question. With his father having died when he was younger under unknown circumstances and his mother now gone from the picture, Artyom was stranded from his two younger sisters– Alya and Polina. They’d been placed in foster care and Artyom hadn’t heard from them in 16 years.   
“Mr. Bershov,” The Agent spoke carefully, pulling back the seat in front of her, letting the back legs scrape against the linoleum floor. “I just need the names of the men who run the organization.” The Agent sighed softly. Where she worked, the Russian mob had never been her problem. It was a pesky folder filed in the drawer of ‘Maybe one day when shit gets real quiet’. Her organization had bigger things to worry about. But the attack on New York on May the 4th had left everyone reeling and in its wake and a weird buddy-buddy relationship had grown with mafias that before would have rather killed each other than mutually benefitted each other. More than ever, Hell’s Kitchen had become a hellhole. As insignificant as Hell’s Kitchen was, it was the insignificance this Agent had been charged with taking care of.   
“If I say the names, I want a deal” Bershov extrapolated “There are people I need to see, promises to keep.” His eyes made a quick dart around the room.  
“You have my word I’ll work for a deal.” She said, keeping her voice level. But she knew getting a Witness Protection deal for a few names was going to be a hard sell to her boss. If they gave every criminal with a useful name a seal of protection, the branch would’ve gone broke years ago.  
“I won’t give a name until you agree to conditions.” He pointed a finger up, telling her to wait for him to list them. “It’s in my jacket pocket.” He didn’t say this with the tone of perversion she expected. He was being honest. Some things were too important to be snarky about.  
The Agent reached in and took out a crumpled list of demands. “You want me to show this to my boss?” She raised a brow.  
“No. I want you to present it to him.”  
She didn’t bother correcting him when she nodded and walked out.

“Wolfram, what the fuck is this?” Lieutenant Tarney asked, seeing the crumpled list of the man who sat on the other side of the one-way window.   
“It’s his list of demands. He won’t talk without these assurances.” Agent Wolfram spoke softly, looking at her boss’s feet before meeting her eyes.  
“It looks like a shopping list.”  
“I’m not sure that’s entirely my fault, ma’am.”  
Tarney regarded her subordinate with a critical eye, but not without respect. “Can’t be too hard. Seems like a good last meal as any.” She spoke with an indifferent shrug, turning away.  
“Last meal?” It took a few moments for Wolfram to register the words said to her by Lieutenant Caroline Tarney.   
“We can’t have a man like that run back to the Russians, Dana.” She said with righteous self-assurance, walking back to Agent Dana Wolfram. “It would blow the whole operation the minute he recognizes you. How long do you think it would be before he runs his mouth? There’s only one way to have one hundred percent guarantee of his silence.”  
“With all due respect, Lieutenant, there are other ways of insuring his silence.”  
“Is there? Are you suggesting Witness Protection?”  
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that complicated. What if we just sent him back to Russia?”  
“Have you tried diplomacy with Russian dignitaries? You want to try asking them to send them back a thug because we don’t need him anymore?”  
“You want to justify killing a man because you don’t have need for him anymore?”  
“The latter is much more doable than the former. Besides, all he asked for was a turkey dinner.”  
“Caroline,” Dana interjected promptly “it’s not just a turkey dinner.”   
Caroline had started making her way down the hall out of the interrogation cells. Agent Wolfram was toe stepping her heels. The Lieutenant turned around, allowing a deep breath to exhale through her nostrils before looking down at the young agent. It wasn’t Wolfram who made her show irritation, it was the struggle between what she wished to do and what she knew must be done.   
“I know. I know it’s not just a turkey dinner, Dana. But how do you expect to get close to the Ranskahovs if you aren’t filling a vital slot in their organization like the one Mr. Bershov unfortunately has? You need contact with them- close contact. Operation Trojan has to go off without a hitch.”  
“Ranskahovs?” Dana raised a brow.   
Caroline turned around and paced faster down the marble floored interior balcony of their base of operations on the second floor.  
“You know their names?” Dana snapped  
Caroline whipped back and looked her in the eyes severely “It was sensitive information, Agent Wolfram.”  
“You knew their names all along. So why bring in Bershov?”  
“What do you think would have happened if you walked into their base of operations and handed them a résumé? That’s not how the mob works, Dana.”  
“So what am I supposed to do? Barge in carrying the head of their communications director by the balls and decapitate him in their living room?” Agent Wolfram suggested, knowing it was a ridiculous proposition.  
She never expected her friend to say, “It won’t be a hard sell to the directors and it’ll make the boys swoon.”   
Dana was quiet as a graveyard before she spoke, desperately trying to keep her voice level– like the captain of a ship stuck in a hurricane, “You brought him in to die. He dies thinking he’ll get to see his family again.”   
“Better than knowing they’ve been dead for years.” Caroline knew Dana was at the end of her rope “I checked. I didn’t just bring him in to die. I’ve been working with Raul in tech. We thought Emerging Technologies could help us print out a decapitated version of Bershov’s head. While he worked on it, I went looking on what deal I could strike up for him that the board would agree to. You know they like the pity stories. No such luck- at least on the pity story. Both girls were found in a ditch a la Black Dahlia seven years ago.”   
“So you’re gonna get the board to sign off on me publicly executing him for brownie points with the Russians?”  
Tarney nodded “Dana, he’s got nothing else to live for. If we send him back the Russians will know something’s up. They will trace it back to us, and everything we’ve worked for will mean nothing.”  
“Alright, when do you present it to them?” Agent Wolfram had her arms crossed, looking up at her Lieutenant.  
“You do. Tomorrow.”  
“What?” Dana was alarmed. She didn’t like the board members and the board members made a habit of returning the favor.  
“Dana, if they see me sticking up and presenting your assignments all the time- especially since I’m your boss,” She made sure to remind Dana of that little remembered fact “not only will you lose credibility. I will too. And they might pull the plug on our project.”   
“So I’m supposed to convince them the right way is the way the innocent man gets murdered?”  
“He’s not an innocent man, Dana.” She spoke gently, a hand on her subordinate’s shoulder sympathetically.

The room was dark, small lights from the semi circle of a desk illuminating the board members faces. They were a large board in charge of a small branch tasked with doing something most people either didn’t believe could be done or didn’t want to be done. Five of the thirty hundred board members the agency could muster up for their branch sat looking at Agent Dana Wolfram, their gaze showed their minds had already been made up. This was not the first time Agent Wolfram had come to them with a proposal. To them, she was just a bleeding heart hippie with no place in their branch, let alone their agency. The woman who sat in the middle, Bette Newman, held the concession for the final vote of the board. In many ways she was their head and voice. She was a woman who had risen in the ranks early on in the Agency and thought that this branch was destined to be the gem in the crown. She left her seat in the board of directors to join this one a year ago. Since, she’d grown sour with the lack of progress in her prestige.  
Harold Thomson sat to Newman’s right. A man with mildly conservative views, he contradicted himself almost constantly. He wanted less government involvement in the people’s day-to-day lives, yet worked for an Agency that infiltrated every citizen’s free will. Not only, but he made a significant amount of money doing so. Dana often found him the weakest man to be the one who trades in his morals for a paycheck, no matter what his morals were.  
Alexander Johnson sat on Newman’s left. A second cousin to President Lyndon B. Johnson, he always concerned himself with looking stately and dignified, without concern for how dirty his hands got. Johnson had no particular qualms with Wolfram– they communicated little and Wolfram made no particular appeal to Johnson in her presentations, so neither had much business concerning the other.  
Caleb Blackburn sat to the left of Johnson, the youngest of the board; he was the only one who still seemed to hold any hope that he could make a difference. He believed that the sphere of influence of a great man was based on truth and honor. Unfortunately, his definitions of truth and honor were what most people would consider apathy and murder.  
Gladys Mallory sat on the right of Thomson, currently the member of the board that Agent Dana Wolfram stood closest to. She was an old and decrepit woman who missed many of their meetings with bad cases of elderly fatigue. Nevertheless, she was a bloodthirsty woman. A friend of Agent Wolfram’s, Raul Velazquez referred to her once as the ‘angriest mummy’ he’d ever seen.   
Presenting the beginning steps of the operation Trojan took more out of Dana than she’d like to admit. She found herself being too frank or hitting points too softly when they should otherwise be taken differently. She was a great speaker when she found herself speaking from an ideology she believed in. But speaking of these steps she found clearly immoral– intentional false hope and murder to be the least of the crimes she’d commit- seemed to rouse the board to a unanimous agreement. Within two weeks she would commence the operation. If she didn’t start within the allotted time, operation Trojan would not commence for another two years. Dana knew they could not wait that long to begin. 

Within three days, Agent Wolfram was fitted with a new identity. Her name was now Genevieve Westcott. Her mother was now from a long line of Russians– white-collar criminals. Her father was now an insignificant mechanic from Terence, Michigan– a town that did not exist until half an hour before she was given her new identity. Apparently the town was so small only a few hundred now lived there. Westcott had moved to Hell’s Kitchen after the battle of New York, just like the brothers Anatoly and Vladimir Ranskahov had, hoping to join her true family.

 

It was raining when she told Bershov the plan. He would lead them to his base of operations- where the brothers were spending most of their time. They’d have an agent scope out the place and then he would be rewarded with a trip home if his information proved true.

Of course, this was utter horseshit.

Artyom Bershov was driven where he directed. He was in handcuffs in the shotgun seat with a nine millimeter to his temple. It didn’t seem to prove difficult for Dana Wolfram to drive with one hand and threaten discombobulating with the other.   
They rolled up to the back entrance of a typical million dollar New York high rise.  
“This is the place were thugs and human traffickers work?”  
“You wanted the brothers, didn’t you?”  
“Just not what I imagined.” She spoke softly. A pre-recorded radio transmuted a message that said, “We can’t confirm the security of the building or the assets Beta and Charlie. Lieutenant Tarney is sending in a command for Agent Whiskey 5 to go in armed with asset Alpha.”   
Agent Wolfram reached up and said, “This is Agent Whiskey 5, copy that.”  
Bershov was trembling in his cuffs. “This was not part of our agreement.”  
Dana Wolfram bit down on her lip momentarily before she replied with grit in her voice “Shit happens. If we’d known it was a high rise we’d have planned accordingly.”  
“Did you expect a bungalow?”  
Wolfram bit her tongue and shoved herself out of the car before opening up Bershov’s side of the car and grabbed him, armed like a bomb.


	2. I Just Did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a nice day for Columbia students Matthew Murdock, Franklin Nelson, and Lucy Clarke to get high and talk about art.

Lucy Clarke sat in her dorm, warm from the smoke that gently billowed around the room. She’d blockaded the cracks of the exits to her room with towels and shirts that needed washing, from her portable radio the youthful voice of Paul McCartney lulled the silences between puffs and drags of what her friend had called ‘herbal creativity’. That friend had today brought along his roommate, a soulful law student with vision impairment, to join in on their monthly hot boxing.  
From the lips of the blind law student, Lucy heard him murmur the words “Into the light from the dark black night.”  
Lucy turned from her painting to fixate on one of the two men sitting on her bed. “You know this song?” She asked after having plucked the blunt from between her lips like a daisy from the field.  
Matthew Murdock nodded, a small smile on his lips. He hadn’t thought anyone could hear him, “My grandmother used to sing it around the house.”  
“No shit.” She smiled widely with a nod.  
Foggy Nelson leaned his shoulder in to his comrade “She’s saying it in a nice way.”  
“I can tell.” Matthew nodded with a small laugh, keeping his head bowed. He could feel his cheeks heating up- his inebriation at the moment preventing his blush from being hidden. If anything, all it did was singe his ears and the tip of his nose with a cherry color.  
After a quiet minute of her painting with the boys behind her either watching or imagining what she painted- appreciating the gentle sound her paintbrush made with every caress of the canvas, Foggy realized with a start he hadn’t finished a paper.  
Pale and high, Foggy jumped to his feet and said “Guys, I’m sorry, I gotta leave. Fuck!” He ran out, running sideways.  
Lucy laughed softly under her breath, carefully closing the door again. “You want to go too?”  
“Only if I’m bothering you.” He gently tapped his cane to the fluffy rug with a wholesome smile.  
Lucy waved it off, smiling to herself. After a moment when Matthew seemed to still be waiting for a response, she scoffed at herself “It’s no problem.” She shook her head.  
“Hope you don’t mind if I take my sweater off.” He said “Not like I can tell,” He pointed to his face and then to hers to signal the absence of visual cues.  
“Please, go ahead.” She smiled, turning back to her work and once again working within the lulls of the Beatles disc she had bought a month ago.  
“So you and Foggy do this every month?” Matthew spoke, outstretched and laid back on the bed, a small sigh weaving through his words.  
“Yeah. Started last year during finals week.” She nodded. They had needed an escape from the stressful studying “’started off as chilled out study session. When that got too stressful and paranoiac, just chilling out happened.”  
“I didn’t know Foggy liked art.”  
“I think its more the free weed than the art.” She gave a soft laugh, reclining back in her office chair and spinning it around to face Matthew, her back to the towering canvas.  
Matthew reclined his head as he laughed. He hadn’t been this comfortable with someone outside of Foggy since Elektra betrayed him. “But from what I can gather, watching people paint is just as relaxing as getting high.”  
“I guess. Kinda like…the Bob Ross effect?”  
“Who’s Bob Ross again?”  
“Landscape artist, made videos of himself painting. Surprisingly very soothing.” She smiled. There was a lull- a comfortable silence between them “Those glasses must be really bothering you.” She spoke softly “It’s gotta be at least 80 degrees in here.”  
Matthew shrugged “It’s more for your comfort. If I take them off all you could see would be dead eyes. At least this way it seems like I’m making eye contact.” He had turned his head towards her voice.  
Knowingly, the Columbia senior asked, “Do you only take them off around people you’re comfortable with?” She asked. Lucy didn’t feel the need to apologize for asking a question. She didn’t fear being unoriginal. She had figured if she didn’t know the answer to a question, she had every right to know the answer.  
Matt caught himself before answering to the question he thought she asked- which was ‘Do you only take them off around people who are comfortable with you?’ After a hesitant pause, he nodded “Never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess.”  
Lucy gave a witty smile “Well, Matthew, I won’t be offended if you don’t take them off in front of me.”  
Lucy swiveled back over, painting her masterpiece. Of course, she was a liberal arts major, so the hobby came with a grade.  
“What are you painting?” Murdock asked, hopping off the bed.  
Lucy rose to take Matt’s hand, her other hand gently at his elbow, guiding him to the open chair beside her. As she continued this fluid movement, she huffed a small laugh, blunts extinguished and the room’s air diluting “A bad rip off of Georgia O’Keeffe.”  
Matt smiled a charming, flattering smile, “Can’t say I’m familiar with her.”  
“And here I thought you were smart.” She smiled, Matthew tilting his head forward to laugh.  
“Describe it to me.”  
“Well O’Keeffe was an American painter. She usually painted flowers or landscape but-“  
“I mean your painting.” His face directed the supposed line of vision from the red tinted sunglasses into her eyes.  
“It’s a version of O’Keeffe’s piece- Red Canna. In the original piece it shows a flower as if you were to watch it bloom right in front of you in full motion. She uses a red scheme to show blooming like a burst of flames.” She spoke softly, reclining back in her chair, “The center of the flower is wrapped up in layers of delicate petals, folding around each other to create a peaceful blanket around the chaos that is this flame of life.” She waited for him to say he understood. When Matthew nodded, she continued “My version of it I chose to use pink colors- to give this flame like form a fleshy quality. In a way, I guess I’m trying to show the volatility of life and how it changes and burns and breaks to react a more complex humanity- whereas O’Keeffe shows it for nature.” She moved her hands around the canvas, massaging the image’s movement inches from the image itself.  
“Sounds beautiful.” He nodded  
“Or it could just be an upside down vagina.” She joked.  
Matthew laughed, “When will it dry?” He smelled how fresh the latest coat was.  
“Soon. Shouldn’t take more than a week. Then I’ll be on to the tenth layer.”  
“Jesus.” Matthew brushed back a hand through his hair and sat there, as if he was looking at the art.  
Lucy did so too, and for a while that was all they did.  
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Matthew asked quietly “You don’t have to answer it if it makes you uncomfortable.”  
“Shoot.” She nodded, leaning back and getting ready for the oh-so personal question.  
“When are you going to finish transitioning?” He asked  
“Foggy told you?”  
Matthew nodded “He told me how you guys met.”  
“Yeah, Foggy’s a good friend.” Lucy smiled happily- thankful to have friends so understanding and supportive. “Physically it’ll take years after the operation- hormone treatments need time to kick in and it’ll be a bitch in the beginning. I’ve already started taking some in lower doses. I think I can finally afford the operation in two years.”  
“It’s expensive?”  
“Like all surgeries, I guess.” She smiled  
Matthew nodded in understanding, remembering his father’s manic monetary scramble to pay for the surgeries Matthew had to go through after the accident.  
“Now, can I ask you a personal question?” She rose a brow, a shoulder tilted to gently push against his.  
“Is it about how I got blind?”  
“No. Foggy told me that. I remember that day. Ever since I couldn’t stop asking myself the question: Why? Why’d you jump? I get that you wanted to save that guy and you might not have known the costs to doing so- but did you just tell yourself you were going to do it? Was it instinctual? What went through your head before you did it- morals aside, I mean.”  
Matthew bit his lip as he thought, removing his glasses and tapping them in his palm– a stalling move– before he shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess that’s the thing- I didn’t have to think about it. I just did.”


	3. Thank You For Your Cooperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dana meets a new version of herself.

Dana had a pen in her pocket as she dragged Bershov with her. He was struggling– wriggling like a fish brought to land and kept there to die. The pen was latched into the inside of her jacket. A seeming commercial pen it was far more professional than its handcrafted counterparts. It was bugged.   
On the other side of the pen Lieutenant Caroline Tarney, Board Member Bette Newman, and The I.T Girl Harriet Sampson listened attentively.   
“Puh-please…” Artyom Bershov’s voice crackled in the ear buds of the people in the small expanse of the tech help’s office, crowded with ashtrays and empty red fast food baskets. Big Gulp sodas, and a dangerous mix of nicotine and tobacco stained the air with their noxious odor. Sampson thanked her lucky Marlboros everyday for her physical thinness. Bershov was loud, “if they see me with you, I’m a dead man. They know I ran after the bust on Hampton Stree-”  
There was a loud rush of static interference before a few thumps hit the room around them. Newman had half a brain to suspect an earthquake had hit New York or an angry Hulk had found their base of operations. The sound of a struggle came from Agent Wolfram’s breath. She seemed to be dragging a heavy load down a carpeted hall.   
“Shouldn’t he be awake for this?” Newman asked, standing straight behind the two sitting, one ear bud in to keep tabs on their agent.  
The low sound of a click was heard– an elevator call button was pressed. A dull ding passed through the ear of the pen. Tarney suspected Wolfram knew about the bug somehow.   
Dana’s labored breathing ceased, and through a sigh of relief, her breath found her long enough for Agent Wolfram to speak “Thank you for your cooperation.”   
Caroline looked down to shake her head. Dana was terrified, and Tarney knew the next time she’d see her friend she would be wearing a different face.  
As the elevator heaved its passengers up the tower, its destination getting closer and closer, a secondary buzzing could be heard on Tarney’s end.   
“Please,” a robotic British voice crackled into their ears “press your index finger to the pad for fingerprint identification.”  
A bit of heaving followed by a grunt preceded a small ding and the whirring of the elevator shaft before complete silence. It was the kind of silence before a bomb, the sudden grace of peace and foreboding anticipation of an unknown danger before it crashes into you like a tidal wave. It debilitates you the second it punches into you, making your senses whine a silent scream because nothing is felt. Dana couldn’t feel her feet thumping across the marble floor. Her heart screamed so loudly she couldn’t hear it. Slowly but surely her ribs felt the asthmatic pounding of her heart, and her cold sweat became apparent in her hands, one of them clutching the man now beginning to wake. He was going through the eye of the storm while she was being whipped around it at 76 miles an hour.   
Bershov barely heard her ask the brothers who stood there, mildly hiding their surprise at the intrusion “I’d like to apply for a job.”

Back in the room, Bette Newman heard the heavy accent of one of the brothers speak, “We are not hiring.” They could assume she knew who they were.

There was a silence that was briefly pierced by a gurgling, like a small fountain in a quiet park before children were to arrive from school to play. Harriet Sampson could remember a park just like that where she lived as a child. It was a dirty stone, a scruffy moss that covered the faces of cherubs playing with water jugs that sputtered out water. The moss had grown so unchecked it stopped the water from flowing correctly in a steady stream and instead most of it trickled down lamely into the dishes below it, growing bigger towards the bottom like a wedding cake. Harriet was suddenly sick. They weren’t listening to outside noises in a penthouse rooftop garden. They were listening to Bershov’s last moments.

A thump proceeded. Blood pooled around the floor. From the growing flood, Genevieve Westcott’s voice emerged, “I’ll take his job.”


	4. To The Beat of Our Noisy Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's winter break and there's something about the holidays that makes these three friends want to go on a road trip

How did Lucy Clarke get talked into spending her winter break from college in a ten-year-old SUV with two loud and obnoxious sophomore college boys? Later, she’d know why. But at the moment, she was driving the two law students occupied with bickering over a Gameboy. “You can’t even see the screen, numbnuts!”  
“Foggy, I don’t want to hear your hate speech. Now give me the Game Boy; I want to play Boki-mon.”  
“It’s Pokémon, you uncultured swine!”  
Lucy perked up “Swine!” She yelled, getting both their attentions.  
“What?” Matthew tilted his head to the side.  
Lucy’s lips etched into a dangerous smile “Hey, Foggy, didn’t your father want you to be a swine herder?”  
Foggy smiled and said, “Actually, it was my mother and she wanted me to be-“  
“A butcher.” Murdock groaned and Clarke laughed it out. How many times had they had to suffer through that inspiring mini-memoir?  
“Aw, you guys remembered.” Foggy touched the spot above his heart.  
“Not voluntarily.” Matthew laughed gently.

Their plan for the holidays was to go upstate and “do holiday stuff” as Foggy had put it. They’d realized this plan when all three were at lunch and none of them had a good answer for ‘what are you doing over winter break?’ Lucy had suggested going upstate and picking out a real tree and the plan unfolded by itself after that.

A few hours later, the little family of three was cramped into the motel room’s queen-sized bed they had rented, packed like three sardines into a two-sardine can. Wrestling for the covers, Lucy had enough. There was no way she could get any sleep.  
Crawling out of the bed like it was a military drill routine, she managed to slip out from under Foggy, who when he slept decidedly latched on to the first thing in his reach.  
The air was cold and fumes of chlorine drifting in from the ‘luxurious’ 24-hour pool had seeped in through any possible crevice. Their bathing suits were discarded to the side, hanging over the already moldy carpet (They had all figured no harm was done in this situation).  
The carpet politely squished beneath and between her toes like forest moss and Lucy gave a heavy sigh before she thought anything of the decision. Hearing the rustling of sheets and the shifting of either of the men in the bed gave her a rush of regret. She figured she had woken Matthew.  
She had been proven right when she heard a small whisper from his lips echo out “Lucy? Lucy, is that you?”  
“Yeah.” She murmured, “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep.”  
“You’re okay?”  
“Yeah, Matt. I’m okay. You need help wrestling off the bear?” She asked with a small laugh, their voices kept quiet to prevent from waking the last of their trio.  
“I’m fine.” He laughed softly and somehow managed to untangle himself from the sheets.  
Lucy fidgeted with her hands so Matthew would have an idea of where she was, making a small sound for him to guide himself to her. “Today was fun.” She smiled  
“Yeah. Are you cold?” He whispered, approaching her and gently resting a testing hand on her arm.  
“That’s what I get for swimming in an outdoor pool in the middle of December.” She laughed softly “Aren’t you cold?”  
Matt gave a small shrug, an easy smile accompanying his head tilt. He reached over and put a blanket sold from their college’s store around her shoulders “At least you’re dry.” He smiled.  
Lucy took a quick look at his fluid movement. He’d reached behind him to grab a blanket she had flung on to the chair upon arriving at the Super 8 Motel. Without having an outlet to appropriately bring up her skepticism, she kept Matthew’s secret to herself.  
“You’re not?”  
“Well, you know, being blind gives a sort of sensory disorder.” He could still feel the water at the roots of his hair and despite the tropical smelling shampoo and conditioner, the sour smell of chlorinated water still lingered on his skin.  
“Besides missing one?”  
He just nodded and his heart (which had been thumping against his Adam’s Apple) plummeted into his gut when she backed away from him.  
The boulder of gold in his body felt like it was trying to punch its way out through the fortified web of his ribs when he felt the drift of air caress around the crags and angles of his face. She had spread the blanket out on the floor. He really thought his heart would win against the sovereignty of his body when she asked, “Tell me about it.” And pat the spot in front of her, loud enough to get a good indication of where he should sit himself down, respecting her personal space.

Easing himself down on to the blanket, he tried against all reason to figure out how to slow down time so he could figure out what to tell her “I’m not sure how.” He had to admit after a small space of silence had invaded their conversation.  
Lucy was thinking: her face scrunched up as she bit her lip “Have you always been this way? Even before you were blind?”  
“I-I don’t think so.”  
“So how did you know you were different from other blind people? I’m pretty sure Stevie Wonder can’t do what you do.”  
“What makes you think he can’t?”  
“Because he’s surrounded by music. On stage, at concerts, that music can be loud. If he was sensitive to that stuff like you are, he wouldn’t surround himself with it.”  
“Or maybe he learned to tune it out.”  
“Was that a fucking pun, Murdock?” She stifled a laugh.  
Despite himself– his anxieties– he laughed to match her volume. Neither of them wanted to wake Foggy. It’s not that they didn’t like the guy. In fact, they loved him. But, moments where it was just Lucy and Matthew were too far and few.  
“I meant to say,” Matt started back up again “once you become accustomed to the sound it’s easy to ignore it. Like, here,” He took her hand between his “I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, I’ve always been surrounded by the sounds of the streets. When I first became blind I couldn’t sleep. I heard it so often and so loudly I could recognize the difference between the motor of an old gas-guzzler and the sound of a Harley ten blocks away. Horns and bells and sirens just became part of what I heard every day. After a while, it just blended into every other sound like before, unless I’m trying to concentrate on it. Like now,” He brought up her hand closer to his face and opened it so she saw the back of her hand.  
Lucy’s heart was beating pretty fast and she began to realize why Foggy almost never let them have time together alone.  
“We’re next to a highway and yet I can hear your blood rushing through your veins and the small heat of the pads of your fingertips. I can tell that you had a blueberry muffin at 6:30 this morning in the van before you drove over to pick up Foggy and me.”  
“That still doesn’t explain the blanket and how you grabbed it as if you could see it.” Matt’s small smile that had grown into the corners of his lips went a little flatter. He had figured the closeness and intimacy would make her forget about the blanket.  
“Truth is, I could see it.” He spoke, biting his bottom lip and awaiting the barrage of questions and angry exclamations.  
Instead, what he heard was a calm voice overlapping a silence heartbeat asking him “What do you mean?”  
“I mean,” Matt’s mouth was going dry “with all the information I get from my senses, it sort of pieces itself together to make a picture of the world around me.”  
“So can you tell colors?”  
“No, it doesn’t really work like that. It’s like when I do this,” He gently laid his hands on her face and his otherwise blind eyes closed. He felt her cheeks get hotter under his palms like they always did. “I can’t really tell what color your eyes are.” He murmured “But I can tell you that you have high cheekbones. When you get migraines you can feel the pressure on them.” His fingertips traveled down to just under her cheekbones “But they aren’t too defined. You have warm, probably rosy cheeks. Your skin is smooth, and always warm. I can guess from that you probably have some sort of tan.” His lips flickered up in a devilish smile when his thumb brushed over her bottom lip with the pressure of a feather and her heart beat out of her chest. “You have a full bottom lip and a slightly thinner top lip with a pronounced but not deep cupid’s bow.” His own breath was coming out a little raggedly now. Matthew had to clear his throat before continuing, his index fingers smoothing out her eyebrows “You over pluck your eyebrows. Maybe you should consider letting the bridge be a little thicker to match the inner corners.”  
Lucy breathed out a laugh “Thanks, Matt.”  
“Hold on, I’m not done.” He smiled, moving his thumbs along the bridge of her nose “Strong nose. But it’s on the thin side. You’ve never broken it. Lucky.” He teased, letting a small laugh go on his exhale.  
“You’ve got the superpower and I’m the lucky one?”  
“It’s not much of a super power. Unless you count being able to tell if food has gone bad before you buy it.”  
“More useful than flying or teleportation.” Lucy shrugged.  
“Oh yeah, God forbid my Top Ramen has gone bad.”  
“You’re an idiot.” She laughed.


	5. Corkboard Case

Franklin ‘Foggy’ Nelson came into the new office space he had leased with his best friend Matthew Murdock. It was their third day in a legitimate office space operating under the name ‘Nelson and Murdock: Attorneys at Law’ scratched on a soggy cardboard sign outside the rental building. On him was a bag with a laptop and the potential for wear-and-tear. In the hand he held his coffee, a paper of the day was firmly dangling from his last three fingers. The other held a box of donuts. The confectionaries roused his partner from his office. He’d been here earlier than his partner under the excuse that he had overslept.   
“Donuts?” Matthew asked, walking to make it seem he was tired, not limping.   
“Oh good, you’re awake.” His blonde haired friend gave a tight smile and a laugh. Something was up with Matthew, but there wasn’t anyway he could confront him about it without straining their relationship. Matthew had told Foggy before– he’s just an early riser. Foggy figured at first that perhaps his friend had to leave mistress’s homes before they awoke, but bruises he had spotted on Matthew were not tell tale of a night well spent. Foggy opened the box and handed it to Matthew, who eagerly reached in to take one.   
Munching on his fried and glazed Delight; Matt had to ask Foggy “You get my paper?” Though it sounded much more like ‘Chu get muh peper?’  
“Yeah, and it’s costing us. And by us, I mean me, you cheapskate.” Foggy rolled his eyes and handed him the copy of the Daily Bugle. Making friends had paid off in the journalistic department– they’d managed to get someone to print them a copy of the obituaries in Braille as long as whoever picked it up paid the fair price for a paper.   
“Why are we paying Linda for Sunday’s obits anyway?” Foggy asked  
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll pay you back.” Matt smiled a little and walked back to his office on the left, looking over the obituaries. Passing his fingers over the bumpy print, Matthew’s lips read off the names and the causes of death. “Gene Carlton, 26, stabbed to death.”  
Next  
“Francis Dietrich, 56, stroke.”  
Next   
“Karla Guido, 42, lung cancer.”  
Next  
“Dana Wolfram, 35, explosion after crashing a vehicle.” Matt’s lips turned up on the left corner and he picked up an Exacto Knife from the drawer of his desk, cutting out the square of paper. He read it, fingers delicately passing over it. “DANA WOLFRAM, 35 year old Columbia alumni and Hell’s Kitchen native died yesterday after a drunk driver hit her vehicle and it collided into a tree upstate. The car ignited causing an explosion. With no living relatives, Ms. Wolfram will be buried on Monday at 3:30 PM at St. Matthew’s Cemetery.”   
Placing the slip of delicate paper in the drawer, the other tens of papers just like it rustled beneath his hand, and he made sure to lock it firmly after.   
Matthew Murdock smiled like the devil. He had plans after work tomorrow.


	6. Because

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I woke up today and saw 222 hits so thank you! I don't know how many read one chapter and left or if you guys are coming back to the story but I'm glad so many people seem to like it! That being said, I love the hits and kudos but I would really love to hear from you guys! Your reactions on the chapters, what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you'd like to know or see would be awesome to hear about! I'm always looking for new ideas and making my audience happy makes me happy. I'm up to hear from you guys! As a rule of thumb, I typically upload one chapter roughly around every ten days. Happy reading!

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Margaret read her vows at the altar, the words dotting into her mind. It was 2010 and she was in love with an unemployed electrical technologies major, Raul Hernandez. During the ceremony, Raul stole a look to his friend, an unlikely compatriot. Lucy gave him a small thumbs up. She looked great, dressed in a purple silky dress that stopped at her knees. She, like all the other guests, were sat outside on white lawn chairs. He’d met Lucy years ago when he was finishing his masters program at Columbia. She was sat between her two friends, law students a year or so younger than her. To her right was the blind one and to her left was the friendly one with the unusual name- he could never remember their names. Funnily enough, Scott Lang, another friend from his undergraduate years, sat behind Lucy and seemed to have been bothering her before the ceremony.   
Lucy leaned over to ask Matt quietly “1 Corinithians?” She asked about the vows once they were being spoken and Raul was focusing on his very-soon-to-be-wife.   
Matt nodded and very quietly murmured “Yeah.”  
She then leaned over to Foggy “You owe me ten bucks.” She whispered to him.  
Foggy’s facial expression turned and he spoke “Are you sure it isn’t from the Book of Common Prayer?”   
“I asked Bible-pedia.” She murmured “Pay up.”   
“Fine.” Foggy grumbled and paid up the ten. “But you owe me five bucks for every chick Matt picks up tonight.”  
Matt’s smile flickered up. He definitely had plans to flirt at the reception, but he didn’t exactly want his friend to pay up money she needed to save now that she had finally had her operation.  
Lucy looked over to Matt, knowing he had heard. Sitting back up straight, she muttered so only he would notice “I swear to all that is good and holy, Murdock, if you have an orgy tonight I’ll flip a fucking cow over.”  
Matt looked down at his lap to hide his humor “Want to go cow tipping?”  
“Fuck you.” She murmured, giving him a small jab to the ribs.  
“Easy, I need my full mobility.”  
“Why are we even friends?”   
“I think it has to do with my good looks.” He teased her.  
“Well it certainly isn’t because of mine.” Referencing to her friend’s blindness.  
“Rude.”  
“Can’t you just go sexless for one night?”  
“And disappoint Matty, Jr.?”  
“Jesus Christ.” She exhaled through her nose.   
“Relax. Just give him back the ten bucks and call it even.”  
“You’ve got some nerve, Murdock.”  
“Shh, pay attention to the ceremony.”  
Lucy grumbled something under her breath and toyed with the ten dollar bill between her fingers.  
“I forgot to tell you, you look lovely today.” He leaned over to tell her.  
“I forgot to tell you, you’re a blind asshole.”   
Matthew laughed and focused on the couple a few feet away from them. The bride’s heart was pumping hard and her palms were sweaty. She hadn’t eaten in the morning to make sure she fit in her dress. Matt found that so silly. Her fiancé clearly hadn’t done the same, he had however abused his skull by brushing his hair fifty thousand times (a rough estimate; Matt’s a lawyer, not a mathematician). 

Less than an hour later, they were still outside enjoying the food, music, and all around festivities. For appearances, Lucy took Matt’s arm. Foggy made a quip of being a ball and chain to Matt, Lucy had retorted it was just a chain now- no more ball(s).   
“Thank god too. I like you better with less testosterone.” Foggy smiled at her and his pearly white display grew over at the tables decorated with food “I better get some food before it’s gone.”  
“Oh yeah, I’m sure they’ll run out soon.” She teased and pecked his cheek “Be careful out there, and avoiding crowding the quiches. Only perverts like quiches.”  
“Alright, okay, okay, mother.” He laughed and walked off.  
Matt was wearing that grin that made him look like he was ten years younger and just woke up to Christmas at Hogwarts.  
“Hey, Lucy?” He asked, his hand gently squeezing her forearm.  
“Yeah, Matt?” She turned to look at him   
“What color is the sky today?”   
Lucy squinted a little and said, “It’d be easier to tell you if it weren’t so crowded.” In truth, her dress was squeezing her too tightly despite its loose look and feel and being around people made her even more uncomfortable. Her hat wasn’t helping when she craned her neck up.   
Sensing this discomfort, Matthew notched his chin to the side “Let’s walk around. There’s a lake a little further.”  
“Yeah.” She saw it, it was only a few tens of feet from the reception but there was nice willow tree blocking a part of it.  
They walked to it casually and upon arriving there she helped him sit so he wasn’t hurt sitting awkwardly by the tree. She still had to get used to the fact that he didn’t need her help so much.  
Yet, Matthew still nodded politely and said “Thank you.”  
Only being able to sit awkwardly, Matthew asked Lucy “Can I help you with that?”  
“Huh? Oh, yeah, please.” She smiled, carefully unclipping her white straw hat from her hair. Matt carefully felt for the zipper at the back of her dress and let the zipper glide down the silky material with his forefinger and thumb guiding it. He heard the gentle slide of her hair being moved out of the way and dared to brush his fingertips over her bare back, feeling the hairs on her skin stand straight up.  
“Thank you, Matty.” She smiled, finally fully exhaling and laying down on the grass while Matthew toyed with the fresh green grass. It was alive, it was real, more real than most things he’d experienced.   
“This’ll sound weird,” Lucy said, and it piqued his interest. “But it almost seems like the sky is…happy.”  
“Really?”  
“Don’t be a smart mouth.”  
“What would you rather my mouth be?”   
“I don’t know, Matt.” She laughed softly.  
Matt’s head hung with a small chuckle coming from his lips. When would she get the hints he’d been dropping?  
“I meant…it’s so blue. Yet pale. Not a cloud in the sky. And it just seems empty.”  
“Empty?”  
“Like anything could happen in it. It looks like freedom in its purest form.”  
“Huh.”  
“I know it sounds weird.”  
“Well, yeah, but it paints a nice picture.”  
“You’re welcome.” She smiled at him, brushing the knots from her hair.  
After a brief pause, Matthew asked, a thin and long blade of wheat-still green- between his teeth, “So how are you since the operation? How do you feel?”  
It had been five weeks since her operation, and yet Matt still checked up on her “Great. I feel like I am finally who I am supposed to be.” She smiled over at Matthew “How you doin’ over there, you ranch hand?” She giggled, seeing the wheat sprout.  
“Loving the view.” He laughed.  
Lucy couldn’t helped herself and she laughed too, leaning back to lay on the grass beside him, talking about everything and nothing at all.


	7. Well That's One Thing We Got

At St. Matthew’s cemetery Matt could sense all sorts of things. Most of the five people here including the priest and the two undertakers were feverishly warm, either because their hearts were pumping more than they should have been through adrenaline or lying or their clothes were warm enough to keep the winter breeze at bay. Apart from him, there was one other spectator to the burying of the empty casket that stayed hidden from the eye. Matt was standing at the foot of the grave and he could hear the person’s heart beat. It was fast and irregular, yet sustainable, like an only half faulty heart transplant. Whoever it was had been hidden behind the large tree five yards from the event beside his friend’s grave- another casket he believed to be empty.  
When all was said and done he made no show of walking over to the person, smelling their perfume more and more- a variant of the French perfume Chloe. Brushing past them, he had to apologize, pretending it was a blunder.   
The unfamiliar voice spoke, “That’s alright, Mr. Murdock.”  
The woman was looking at him now, and it was Matt who wore the stunned face “How do you…?”  
“You know who I am. You know what I work for, or at least you’re getting there. I have to warn you, Matthew, if you keep pulling this string whatever it’s holding back will fall on you and cripple you like a ton of bricks.” The voice was icy and seemed far away despite coming from right next to Matt. “The only reason I haven’t come dealt with you personally is because someone thinks you ought to be left alone. Thankfully, she doesn’t know I or yourself are here and that means I can tell you this:” Lieutenant Tarney spun on her heels to look down directly on Matthew Murdock “you do not want to find her. I know you think you do, but the closest you will find to Lucy Clarke is in the ground behind me, do I make myself clear?”  
“What if I was looking for someone else?”  
“Then you and your secret can not be protected by those in my industry who wish to protect you.”   
Matt let her leave after that, waiting for a familiar heartbeat to unveil itself after years of hiding. He waited for hours and hours until he realized she was not coming to find him. In that time, he allowed himself to wonder what the woman had meant when she mentioned his secret. Did they know about his alter ego? And who was ‘they’? More importantly, what had really happened to Lucy Clarke? Lucy Clarke was the girl who drove them everywhere, no matter how far. She was their designated driver and their provider for all things stress relief. Lucy Clarke was a smart girl who had graduated five weeks before her DUI that ended her life.   
Just thinking about it, thinking about the funeral, thinking about Lucy’s weeping mother and stone-faced-bleeding-heart father, threatened tears to trespass the threshold of his eyes. He remembered Lucy’s younger siblings, all three of them- Jonathan, Kimberly, and Daniel. Daniel, the youngest of them cried without knowing what for. How could a two-year-old understand the finality of death? Matthew remembered his anger boil up in himself when all was said and done and Lucy’s ashes were buried and it was just he and Foggy around their friend buried under roses. At first, he had been angry at himself- how could he have let her go out alone? Anything could have happened to her. Instead, he had let her go alone to a party because he wanted to spend time with a woman that he was sure was his own personal hell now. Was it worth breaking into that house with Elektra to later find out from Foggy that Lucy had been admitted to the hospital but died on arrival?  
Then Matthew, getting ready for the funeral, had gotten angry with her, at Lucy. How could she do this to them? How could she have been so reckless when they knew her to be so caring and nurturing and careful?   
When he passed his fingers over her grave’s indented letters, a true rage sparked inside him. He had expected to read ‘Here lies Lucy Clarke, beloved daughter and friend’ as Matthew and Foggy had suggested to the family when they contacted Lucy’s friends. Instead, what he had read was ‘Here lies Christopher Buchanon, beloved son and brother’.   
Just thinking about it made his blood boil again and his beaten knuckles clench around the handle of his cane. By the time he had compartmentalized it, three hours had gone by and not a sign of anyone he was waiting for.  
Getting up and brushing himself off, he walked to the freshly dug grave and left a sticky note on top of it, thinking if she were to ever show up, she’d find the note. It read ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 9:30’, hoping against hope that if she were to find that note she would remember what Breakfast at Tiffany’s meant and where to find him.


	8. Send Help

It was 8:30 at night when Lucy Clarke had been checking through her emails for twenty minutes and she was hit with an email from Matt with the title ‘Send Help’ written and sent less than a minute ago. Lucy smiled, shaking her head a little and opened the email, reading his message. Matt couldn’t text so when he wanted to send her a message he had to resort to a computer with a braille keyboard.  
‘LUCY, FOGGY IS MASTURBATING IN THE ROOM. HE THINKS I CAN’T HEAR HIM. PLEASE SEND HELP. SEND A SWAT TEAM. I DON’T CARE JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE.’  
Lucy laughed and sent an email, knowing he’d hear the pitch of the notification meaning she had heard his plea. She wrote back ‘I’ll pick you up in a bit. Hang tight, Super Lucy is on the way’

The reply Lucy sent was played out loud on the computer with a few clicks of affirmation from Matt. Foggy stopped and asked, his voice cracking “You’re going out with Lucy tonight?”  
“Yeah,” Matt cleared his throat   
“It’s not like a date, right?”  
“No, I mean, we’re just probably gonna go out for drinks. She had that thing when we went out for my birthday. This is to make up for it, I guess.” Matt scratched the back of his head awkwardly.  
“Yeah. You need help picking out clothes?”  
“No! I mean, no, I’m fine. I got Lucy to put little braille tags on my clothes so I know what I’m wearing.”  
“That’s cute.” Foggy mumbled.  
“I’m sorry?”  
“No, you guys are just hanging out a lot. I don’t mean to sound like a third wheel or anything-“  
“Foggy, you’re not a third wheel. We’re not dating.”  
“You’d like to, though. She probably would too.”  
Matthew was exasperated at this point. “So?” He sighed.  
“So, when you want to date someone it’s not long before you actually start dating them.”  
“Foggy, that’s ridiculous.”  
“It’s working with that Elektra chick.”  
“Wait, it is?”  
“Oh my gosh, Matt, just leave.” He sighed, reclining back in his cot and sighing deeply. “Just go have fun without me.”  
“Did you wanna come too?”  
“Did I? No, you can just go. I have to finish this chapter before Monday anyway.”  
“Well if you’re sure-“  
“Yeah, Matt, I am.”  
“Fine then.”  
After a while of shuffling for clothes, Matt brought up his shirt. The shirt was a button-up of a burgundy color “Is this the purple shirt?”  
“It is not.”  
“Do you know where the purple one is?”  
“Dry cleaners?”  
“Oh, that’s right. So which one is this one?”  
“Like a Bordeaux.”  
“Really?  
“Yeah. At least if she stabs you it won’t ruin the shirt like last time.”  
Matt gave a short laugh “I can’t believe she actually stuck a fork in my arm.”  
“I can’t believe it was an accident.”

A minute later, Lucy knocked at the door. She smelled of the green tea, honey, and fresh cut lemongrass that was her perfume and the leather of her jacket making a medley of scents with the smell of her detergent on her cotton plaid shirt that had been pressed into her closet with a small bag of dried lavender she’d bought in the small town around the wedding reception. “Ready to go, Murdock?” She grinned while leaning against the doorway.  
“As I’ll ever be.” He smiled.  
“I’m taking you to a dive bar, not a frat party. Chill out.” Lucy reached over to put her hand on his shoulder as he walked through the doorway, taking his arm in one swift yet firm motion. “Got your cane?” She asked.  
“In my pocket.” He patted on his jacket  
“Men, with your deep pockets.” She rolled her eyes.  
“Women, with your stabbing forks.”  
“That one time!” She laughed  
“I could’ve lost an arm!”  
“Stop being such a drama queen, Murdock.” She smiled and nudged her forehead to his cheek to nudge him away in a tease.

When they got to the establishment, Lucy and Matt took their seats at the bar and mulled around the options for drinks.  
“So, beer, tequila, or fruity lady drinks with the flirty parasols?” Lucy smiled over at Matt, her elbow on the counter and her hand under her chin. Her neck had been craned up to better see the menu on the chalkboard above the rows of booze behind the counter.  
“You know, actually, I could kill for a Bloody Mary.”  
“So violent.” She laughed under her breath “Tell you what, let’s take shots and…” She turned her head to the side- left to right- and read the poster on the door saying ‘KARAOKE NIGHTS FRIDAY-MONDAY 8:30-CLOSING’. Lucy gave a wicked smirk and said, “Whichever one of us can still walk in a straight line after drinking five shots gets to watch the other sing a karaoke song of their choice.”  
“Objection, my amendment rights are being violated.”  
“Don’t be a stick in the mud, Matthew. Just because you study law doesn’t mean you have to lawyer me around.”  
Matt gave a small laugh and offered “Cruel and Unusual Punishment?”  
“You agreed to waive those rights when you agreed to going out with me tonight.”  
“That is…c’mon, Lucy, you know I’m a lightweight.”  
“And I’m a delicate woman. You’re really gonna let me out drink you?”  
“Fine.”  
“You chose which tequila.”  
“Out of courtesy?”  
“Ladies first.”  
“Wow.” Matt shook his head “You are really something.”  
“Bite me.”  
“After five shots? I might.”  
“So should I bring the camera out now or are you gonna keep being boring and sober?”  
“Fine, fine,” He sighed and waved a barman over “Two shots of Cuervo, por fa-please.”  
“Nerd.”  
“Shut up. You just want to get me drunk.”  
“Nah, I just want you to sing a Pussycat Dolls song.”  
“You’re the worst.”  
In response, Lucy started humming the tune of ‘Don’t Cha’’ while the shots arrived, downing it while winking at the bartender. Matt had to stop himself from smiling too much to not spill the drink. He didn’t want to have to smell alcohol in his closet for the next two weeks. He coughed and sputtered as the drink slid down his esophagus, giving the faintest reminiscence of reflux.  
However, within fifteen minutes on shot number five, it was Lucy who was the most smashed. When she fell sideways without the instinct to protect herself Matt laughed truly wishing he could see her face. “Are you…are you alright?” Matt giggled like a preteen girl.  
“Mmm…fine.” She murmured and stumbled up and said, “M’kay, what song?”  
“I think you know.”  
“Oh, please, dear God, no.” She groaned but managed up the steps to the mini stage “Okay, okay, uh…” She looked over the list of songs and put her finger on the song’s name “B-Deep Blue Something. Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She wiped her hands over her face and took the mic, leaning against the stand with a laugh coming from half of her lips.


	9. A Girl Named Lilly Tyler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! Sorry, I'm late! I hope you guys forgive me with this playlist I made to inspire me when I write. I'll update it when a good amount of new songs come in:  
> The House of the Rising Sun- The Animals  
> Strawberry Fields Forever- The Beatles  
> Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles  
> Serious- Duffy  
> All Fall Down- OneRepubic  
> To The Beat of Our Noisy Hearts- Matt Nathanson  
> Don't Let Me Down- The Beatles  
> Get Back in My Life- Maroon 5  
> Like A Prayer- Madonna  
> Penny Lane- The Beatles  
> Tyrant- OneRepublic  
> Six Degrees of Separation- The Script  
> Shiver- Maroon 5  
> Big Love (Live)-Fleetwood Mac  
> Falling Slowly (American Idol Studio Version)- Lee DeWyze and Crystal Bowersox  
> Hail Rain or Sunshine- The Script  
> Hallelujah (American Idol Studio Version)- Lee DeWyze  
> 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover- Simon & Garfunkel  
> How- Maroon 5  
> Last Kiss- Taylor Swift  
> Until You Let Me- Oh Honey  
> Hands All Over- Maroon 5  
> Wedding Dress- Matt Nathanson  
> The Man Who Can't Be Moved- The Script  
> Breakfast At Tiffany's- Deep Blue Something  
> Seven Nation Army- The White Stripes  
> Bitch- Meredith Brooks  
> Come As You Are- Nirvana  
> Ain't No Rest For The Wicked- Cage The Elephant  
> Love Don't Die- The Fray  
> Hurricane- The Fray  
> Over My Head (Cable Car)-The Fray  
> The Pheonix- Fall Out Boy  
> Blackbird- The Beatles  
> The Air That I Breathe (Bonus Track)- Maroon 5  
> Bleeding Out- Imagine Dragons  
> Scream- Michael Jackson  
> How to Save A Life (New Version)- The Fray  
> The Long and Winding Road- The Beatles

Genevieve Westcott’s attention was pulled away from the report brought in by two cronies, Vitaly and Bogdan, about the man in the black mask’s interference with their latest shipment of women. Genevieve spent a while looking at security footage the men had swindled in order to complete the report Gen had commissioned them for. Instead of looking over at this masked man in the pictures with a protective sense of recognition and wondering how the hell she was going to report this back to Wesley in their next meeting, she was made to look up through her office window that gave way to a private room, an antechamber between her and the Ranskahov brother’s space of work, or lack thereof. She’d taken so much in hand since her sudden climb up the ladder she might as well be the Russian Mafia herself. Anatoly and Vladimir were like children hacking away at whatever they pleased and thinking they were the ones keeping it together.   
What now drew her stare was the woman- or rather, girl- being dragged into the antechamber with a black bag over her head. “Jesus fucking Christ,” She sighed to herself, gathering the scrambled documents to one disorganized pile on her desk effectively hiding pictures of the Masked Man. While one arm was occupied with this action, the other put down her morning coffee from her lips. It wasn’t uncommon for her to find yesterday’s morning coffee cold on her desk and barely started.  
“Matryoshka,” Valentin called out, dragging the poor girl by her forearms “I found one of the girls you asked me to locate.” He looked proud of himself.  
Gen stepped out of her office, the hundred dollar pair of heels clicked with her stride. “Valentin,” She gave him a pitiful smile “maybe you should act less like a cock and more like a hawk. They seem to find what they need to faster and more efficiently.”  
Valentin’s bald head got so red that if it were in a cartoon, eggs could be cooked on it.   
“What’s her name?” Gen asked, sitting the girl down and taking off the bag.  
“02-348.”  
“That’s not a name. Leave us.”  
Begrudgingly the man left.  
“Did he hurt you?” Dana spoke softly.  
Looking down, the young woman shook her head.  
“You can tell me.” Dana kept her voice gentle to compensate for the girl’s terrified state of being, her head tilted down to meet the girl’s dark eyes.   
When the girl looked up, Dana finally saw why she had been kept silent. A huge bruise plagued her cheek and her lip had a severe cut through it.   
Dana asked, “Who did this to you?”  
The girl shook her head.  
“Was it Valentin?”  
She shook her head again.  
“Vladimir? Dmitri?” She didn’t think Anatoly was the kind to do this. He was tamer than his brother.   
The girl couldn’t have been more than 18 years old. She had a dark complexion and beautiful curly hair, dark like her eyes. From her lips her voice cracked as she spoke, “my mother.”  
Dana’s heart broke for the girl. “What’s your name?”  
“Lilly.”  
“Lilly who?”  
“Lilly Tyler.”  
“That’s a good name.” She smiled a little, just to see if Lilly would reflect it. She didn’t. “Look, Lilly, I brought you here,-“ Lilly started crying as if she knew why she’d been brought there. “Lilly, listen to me, I brought you here to tell me all about the man in the mask that freed you and those other girls. Can you do that for me?”  
She nodded.  
Dana sighed and walked back to her office, starting the coffee machine to make a fresh pot and taking out her first aid kit from under her desk beside her gun. “Raise your head, Lilly.” She murmured, disinfecting the wounds with care.   
Within the hour, Lilly’s wounds were cared for and she had a blanket and some hot coffee in her hands.  
“I didn’t see much but I have no idea how he moved that way. The bandana around his eyes was thick. It didn’t seem like he’d need sight to do what he did. And yet,”  
“Thank you, Lilly.”  
“But I’m not done.”  
“You’ve given me everything I needed to know.”  
Lilly’s eyes widened and her knuckles whitened around the mug’s handle. Dana saw this and stopped it, resting her hand on Lilly’s. “There’s no need to be afraid. Tell me about your mother. Why did she do this to you?”  
“I went out late. Snuck out. Didn’t come home until a few days later.” Lilly sniffled, feeling crushing guilt. “I tried telling her I was almost kidnapped.” She shook her head “Didn’t matter much to her.”  
“I see. Has this happened before?”  
“It’s not the first time I’ve done something without her permission.”  
“That’s not what I asked.”  
Lilly nodded, her eyes darting across the room.   
“Do you have any brothers, sisters, anyone else who has had this happen to them?”  
Another nod.  
Dana sighed and went to her desk, pulling out a business card before walking back to the trembling girl “I want you to go to the law offices of Nelson and Murdock. Tell them who you are and what you’re mother has done. Don’t go back home. These guys are good people. They’ll take up your case for peanuts.” She gave a reminiscent smile. “I’ll drive you there myself. Don’t go back to your mother. And Lilly,” She tilted her head up with a crooked finger under her chin “it’s not your fault. It never was. It never will be. Now come on.”   
Dana waited for the girl to stand before having to put the bag on her head with a warning, helping her to the garage and into a car, driving down to the Headquarters of Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law.   
Lilly was quiet the whole way through and observed this curious woman. Lilly had seen enough dye jobs to know her hair was never a beach blonde before, and from the back of her neck she saw a faint littering of freckles that had been hidden with makeup on her face. Her eyes were as conflicting as her (a good person in the business of the Russian mafia), a bizarre medley of greens and browns.  
What Lilly soon observed was Lucy Clarke stopping her vehicle off to the side for a beggar and giving him ten dollars like it was nothing, then continuing on her route.

Upon arriving at the block, Dana parked the car and looked back at Lilly “They’re on the third floor.”  
“You’re not coming with me?”  
“Best if I don’t.”  
Lilly didn’t have to be asked twice to get out of the car, but she couldn’t help but feel like maybe this was all a trap. Could she have escaped twice?  
“Ms. Tyler, best of luck to you.” Dana nodded and handed her a bag with some cash, snacks, water bottles, toiletries, and a few first aid necessities.  
“Who are you? If they ask?” Lilly stepped outside and asked through the open window.  
“They won’t.” Dana closed the window and drove off. Checking the time, she smiled a little. Lucy had an appointment she couldn’t miss.


	10. You've Got A Friend In Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! If you ever want to communicate or see the ideas I'm going over, my Tumblr blog is http://charlie-parker-blog.tumblr.com/

“I’m sorry I ran out like that.” Matthew panted, his fingers usually so nimble now fumbling over his collar to unbutton his shirt. It felt like a dirty second layer of skin.  
“Matthew,” Lucy smiled, making sure it was evident in the voice she kept soft for Matthew’s benefit “It’s alright.” She stepped closer to him but kept a bubble of space of about a foot.  
“It’s-It’s just-“ Matthew’s mouth felt dry and he leaned over, his hands resting on the counter and leaning his weight against it. Words weren’t coming to him in the right order.  
“It’s a lame party anyway.” She shrugged. It was five weeks before Lucy would graduate and Foggy decided to celebrate her last college party. Of course Foggy had found Marci within the minute they arrived and had left Lucy and Matthew to the fraternity party’s will.  
As soon as Matt had walked in with them he knew he wouldn’t be all right. The lights felt too warm against his skin, making his clothes feel five times heavier. The music was a decibel too loud and the speakers were cheap, a high pitch ringing accompanying the sounds of a new age of dance music.  
All of this culminated to where Lucy and Matthew were now, in the spacious pantry of the Delta Deltas.   
“No, it’s-“  
“It’s stuffy and the beer sucks.”  
“Lucy,-“ He was at a loss for words and not of the usual shock.   
“Matthew,” She sighed, resolved to help him. Whether it took root in the martyr complex or the concern he had for his friends over his own health, Lucy knew to help Matthew she had to make it seem like he wasn’t putting himself first. “I need some fresh air.” She smiled, extending her hand to him.  
Matthew’s smile flirted with the head tilt he made towards her hand. All he could think of was how much he loved this girl. “Take my hand.”   
Matthew took her hand.  
“Have you got Thurgood Marshall?” Lucy smiled  
Matt finally cracked a laugh, shaking his head and showing her his folded up cane “Right here.”  
“Okay, good.” She giggled; remembering how she had found out that Matt calls his cane Thurgood Marshall. She imitated him in a panicked state, “Foggy, Foggy, I can’t find Thurgood Marshall!”  
Once they stepped outside, Matthew imitated Lucy while trying to suppress a laugh “He lives within you, Matty.”  
Lucy couldn’t help but guffaw at the memory, causing Matthew to laugh with her.  
“You know, you really are something else, Lucy Clarke.” He smiled over at her.  
“That’s sweet of you to say, Matthew Murdock.” Lucy looked over at him and when she did she caught his absent stare. He’d taken off his glasses and stuck them in his shirt, hanging from the first clasped button.  
He’d have kissed her right there and then, and looking back he wishes he’d have done it or at least asked her about it, but in the seconds it took for the moment to happen, it also ended.  
Lucy moved her head away, arm in arm with Matthew as they walked down a well-lit sidewalk in the college town. “So, how are you and the Greek girl? Made any progress since the dinner party?”  
“Elektra?” Matthew smiled. Was she jealous? Did the green-eyed monster trigger that skip of her heart?  
“Yeah.” Lucy had her doubts about Elektra. Those doubts mostly came from the fact that she couldn’t trust anyone but her and Foggy with Matt’s well-being. “You said you guys met at that party you and Foggy crashed.”  
“You should’ve been there.”  
“You know why I wasn’t.” Lucy’s family had a reputation among debutantes and rich neo-feudalism families and Lucy was always recognized as an intriguing stain on the family at those functions.  
“Yeah, I know. Elektra actually mentioned you once. I was talking about my friends and she knew you by your new name. Elektra thinks it’s a shame you can’t go to those parties but she kinda envies you for having a good excuse to not go.”  
“Elektra Natchios envies me?”  
“I guess.” Matthew shrugged. His mood was significantly better since they mentioned the diplomat’s daughter.   
“So what is she like?”  
“She’s great, Lucy. You two would get on. Not because you’re alike but she’s the kind of person you tend to get along with.”  
“You’re gonna have to tell me why.” They stopped at a bench so Lucy could take off her heels– stupid idea to wear heels to a party.   
Matthew sat beside her “She’s got this ferocity about her and I can’t quiet place where it comes from. She’s rebellious and passionate. What she feels, she feels intensely.”  
Lucy looked up at Matt “You really like her, don’t you?”  
It took a while before Matthew spoke, head faced forward “Yeah, I do.”  
“And you think I’d get along with her because…?”  
“I don’t know.” Matthew admitted, “Guess I just really want you two to get along.”  
There was a pause. The pause was potent, pregnant, and it flowed between them. Matthew knew what he had to say, afraid the silence would be permanent “Because you’re my best friend.”


	11. The Eyes Have It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus! I knew I needed to take a break and a good round number like chapter ten seemed the way to do. I still have no stance on flashback chapters and if they'll resume, but it seems like they may not unless anyone would like to raise questions or request scenes necessitating a flashback chapter in the comments! With this message, I break the hiatus! See you in ten days :)

“So tell us again, slowly, like we’re five, what happened. Start at the beginning.” Foggy Nelson was tapping the tip of his eraser capped pencil without thought, his eyes a little sunken from the day’s coffee’s half life.  
Lilly Tyler was nervously fiddling with her thumbs when she replied, “I was out with some friends from school. Janie had just started dating Mark who works at this club not too far from the coffee shop we usually hang out at on weekends.”  
The two lawyers in front of her were hard at work picking up the pieces of the story she was painting for them. Matthew was pacing slightly with his head tilted downwards.   
“So Marcia cooked up some fake IDs and we went on Saturday the following week. It was free drinks with Mark and we were bored. Some guy approached us- tall, muscular, bald. He was in a wife beater and he offered Trina some sort of party drug. Last thing I remember being lucid for in there was Trina telling us she’d slipped it into all of our drinks.” Lilly took a deep breath before continuing, remembering what had happened to her afterwards vividly. She’d occasionally wake up thinking she’d find herself in that van again, piled in between a handful of other women, suffocating. “The next thing I remember-“ She hiccupped with her struggle to articulate, “the next thing I remember is waking up in this van. You know like in those pedo vans? But on the inside. Most of the other women were dressed like me, like they’d been at a party before. They were still out cold. I heard a man driving and talking into a radio, saying something about a package being delivered in a few minutes. I didn’t recognize what the other voice said. Sounded like a different language. Next thing I know, we’re parked and someone starts banging what sounds like a club against the side of the van and all the other women jump. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had woken up before that. One of them had a heel scrape under my eye. That’s where the scar comes from.” She brushed her fingers back behind her ear with her dark, curly hair to reveal along the side of her eye a tiny scratch of a scar. With a shrug and another gaze downwards she continued, “they pulled us all out and a man with scars on his face was there briefly. He looked like the main guy. He had a Russian accent. Blue eyes, blonde hair, really rude to the other guys. He was there for like five minutes before getting cut off by a phone call. He never came back. Something about a girl- Genevieve, I think he called her. We were all huddled in to these sort of shipping crates and when the guy who drove us there was shutting the door on us, I heard these punches land and I saw this guy all dressed in black with a bandana over the top half of his face. He was flipping around beating these people up like Jet Li…it was incredible. He told us to leave when he took care of the four or five other guys holding us and I didn’t think to ask about who he was. I went back to Marcia’s that night. Her mother answered the door but she told me she hadn’t seen Marcia since the night we went out. Same with Trina and Janie. It’s been two weeks and they still aren’t back…but two days ago, I got a text from Janie asking to meet up next to the Seattle Coffee in the alleyway down by fifth. When I get there, there’s no Janie or Trina or Marcia but there’s the guy that gave those drugs to Trina. I ran when I saw him and his car with the doors open, but he caught up with me and put a rag over my mouth and nose and a bag over my head.” At the beginning of this explanation, Lilly’s heart was beating out of her chest. She’d felt nervous and like if she told the story they would think she was victimizing herself, but if she said it another way they might think it was all her fault. Deep down, she felt dirty from what had happened to her.  
“Where did you wake up, Lilly?” Matthew asked, leaning on his cane towards her intently behind the desk.  
Lilly felt stronger now to tell the rest of her story, more confident of what had happened “When I woke up, I was in a waiting room, just sitting there. No one else in it. It looked like a waiting room for a corporate office and I think I saw the clock say something around 8:00. I’d been out for at least a day. Now I think it might’ve been two because this just happened a few hours ago. The phone rings at the reception and a nice lady with dark hair and this heavy Russian accent tells me I can see Ms. Westcott now. It was the most surreal thing I could ever imagine. This man, Valentin, drags me into the room and meets Ms. Westcott. She gives me a coffee or hot chocolate…I can’t remember what I tasted. She asked me about the man in the mask. I don’t know how she knew who freed me but she did. She barely let me say a word past his physical description before she told me that I’d said enough. I thought she was going to kill me. Then…Then she drove me to your offices, dropped me off and told me you guys were on the third floor.”  
“That’s it?” Matt asked with an eyebrow rising suspiciously.  
“That’s it.”  
“I’m sorry, I’m just having trouble understanding why the person who ordered you to be kidnapped would drop you off here, at a law firm. How did she even know about us?” Foggy turned to look back at his colleague as he spoke. They were in way over their heads.  
“I don’t know. She just said you guys are good people.”  
“What did she look like?” Matthew cut in, his voice basically jumping at the question.  
“Very…womanly? Blonde hair, like the models on the beach. Her eyes were weird too. Almost like a camouflage pattern- greens and browns.” She tried remembering the close details she had observed about her would be captor. “Freckles, I think. Mostly hidden. I saw the back of her neck. They were freckles like red head’s freckles.”  
“So she’d dyed her hair?” Matt asked.  
“I don’t think that’s what’s important, Matt.” Foggy reminded him.  
Matthew shrugged “If she’s trying to cover up her appearance, maybe it’s because other people know how she looks like.” The strange description of the eyes got to him. He’d heard of multiple people like that but how probable was it have an affiliation with now three? There was Shelby Fromme, the girl who worked at the coffee shop him and Foggy frequented. She worked Sunday mornings when only people who need to work would come by for an apple turnover and coffee. According to Foggy, she wasn’t too bad on the eyes either. There was now Ms. Westcott, who he connected to the Genevieve mentioned earlier. She seemed to be somewhere close to the head of the snake that was the Russian crime syndicate. The third was a difficult memory. A girl long dead but not long forgotten. Lucy Clarke had eyes just like that and hair the color of a sunset.   
The only thing stopping Matt Murdock from connecting the dots was the memory of Lucy Clarke and what she was to him now. Her memory haunted his senses, overtook them when he laid awake at night after a rough go in the black jumpsuit. Matthew could basically see her. The scent of her lemongrass, green tea perfume in harmony with the soft kiss of her touch, smooth skin always warm to the touch. The sound of her heartbeat was always a welcome sound. He imagined it was the same feeling people got when they came home and heard their mother whistling while she worked than when he heard Lucy’s heartbeat.

Except all of that was gone. 

All Lucy is now- her eyes, hair, skin, her heart- all that it is and ever will be is ash.


	12. Let Them Go

The meeting didn’t go as plan. None of Dana Wolfram’s day went as planned. It started out successful. She managed to finish her coffee and Genevieve managed to get Valentin to find Lilly. It didn’t take too much research and strain on Wesley’s part to find out who Lilly was. She couldn’t have been more than five when her father reported himself to child services for sexual abuse.   
She’d been on her way to her penthouse for a nice nap when a conference call came in on her burner. Caroline wanted an update.  
Dana met at the café around the corner of Nelson and Murdock where Shelby Fromme worked mornings, sitting down with Caroline at a booth in the quaint shop.   
“The Ranskahovs are hopeless.” She spoke softly, afraid of being overheard.  
“What do you mean by that?”  
“I mean, one of them keeps losing his head over his rabid dog of a brother and they can’t keep anything under control. It’s a miracle for them that I’m here. I can’t exactly infiltrate something that doesn’t exist anymore.”  
“Last we spoke, you told me about going to a meeting of entrepreneurs in secret. What happened?”  
“It’s a weekly thing. I’ve gone to two of them for the brothers. There’s no love of the Russians there any more than there is here.” She mentioned her locale of employment. “It’s meetings in defunct construction zones. Where no one will ask any questions. There’s a Japanese businessman. I think his name is Nobu. He may have affiliations with the Yakuza but I can’t confirm it yet. There’s Madam Gao. She runs the Chinese opium ring in Hell’s Kitchen. Doesn’t speak a word of English. Then there’s Leland Owlsley. He does all the accounting for the boss. His name is Fisk.” Dana whispered, dodging her eyes back and forth especially on the last piece of information. If anyone overheard her say Wilson Fisk’s name they could link it right back to her lips. “No one is supposed to say his name. But here’s something you might find even more interesting. You remember our operative we sent a few years ago to track Owlsley? He’s at those meetings too, going under the name James Wesley. He’s some kind of right-hand man for Fisk now.”  
Tarney tried to keep her voice from wavering “Oliver’s alive?”  
“Yeah! That treacherous little shit.” Dana grumbled, looking down into her cappuccino. “I told you we should have sent a recon force.”  
“We didn’t have the resources.”  
“We still don’t.”  
“Doesn’t matter now.” Dana shook her head   
After a small silence consisting of Dana twirling her spoon in her cappuccino and adding sugar while Caroline picked at her bagel with cream cheese, Caroline decided to mention against her better judgment “Your boyfriend left you a note again.”  
“My boyf-Matt?”  
“Yeah. At your grave.”  
“At Lucy’s grave.”  
“Yours all the same.”  
“Fine. What did it say?”  
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s? 9?”  
“Oh.”  
“What?”  
“Nothing.”  
“Dana,”  
“I know.”  
“If you did,”  
“I know.”  
There was a pause. Both women were thinking. One about how she could see her friend again and another thinking of all the reasons she couldn’t.  
“You know who he is.”  
“Yeah.” Caroline cleared her throat and shuffled in her seat.  
“So why can’t I?”  
“Because it would lead to questions and it would tangle him up in your other identity. You can’t just jump back in his life. You have no idea what he’d do with that information.”  
“I know. Can I ever…?”  
“You signed the same paper we all did.”  
“I wish I never had.”  
“I’m sorry,-“  
“I wish you never made me sign.”  
“I’ve never made you do anything you never wanted to.”  
“Is that right?”  
“You know I would never do that to you.”  
“Artyom Bershov.”  
“Dana,”  
“Shut up. Don’t lie to me. We’re not friends, you know. I’m just some employee of yours that makes you look good to the council. That’s it. And anything you want to make me do you sell it to me to make yourself feel better. I don’t buy it. I never have. I’ve bitten my tongue this long, Caroline, out of respect. Do you know what you made me do last night?”

A waitress came over with a coffee pot, her Brooklyn accent strong when she asked, “Can I get youse anythin’ else?”  
“The paper?” Dana broke the intense eye contact she’d made with Caroline for a polite nod to the tired waitress with a stitched in name tag that read ‘Winona’.  
“Sure, doll. I’ll be right back with it.” 

As soon as Winona left, Dana was leaned over the table and back at obliterating Caroline with her stare. “Yesterday, Vladimir wanted to drive out the Masked Man. Genevieve told him to go for it, because why wouldn’t she? It wouldn’t make any sense to not pursue the asshole tanking her sales and reputation. Do you know what Vladimir did?” Dana growled, her knuckles white.  
Without a question to tell her to stop, she spoke “He kidnapped a nine-year-old boy and killed his father in front of him. Now,” Dana cleared her throat as a dangerous, humorless chuckle came from her chest “you can tell me all this bullshit. Doing it for the cause or whatever. But I’m not this naïve little girl anymore. I’m not some 21-year-old fresh-faced outta college kid with a positive outlook and a meaningless degree. I’m not the same person you approached on the quad to tell me I was special and needed to make this world better for the next generation, because I see what I’m having to do to children -what my work is making me do- and I’m not seeing your sunny-side up explanation of it.”

“Here’s your paper.” Winona came back with the paper.  
“Thanks.” Dana nodded and left a tip in her hand before taking the paper and slapping it onto the table in front of Caroline “You need it more than I do.”   
On the front page was the Union Allied scandal involving a desk secretary Karen Page and a dead man Daniel Fisher. Her two attorneys mentioned as ‘Kitchen newbies’ and the dissolving of Union Allied. On page sixteen a half paragraph was dedicated to a police search of a missing boy taken in the Bronx last night.

In all her anger and righteous rebellion, Dana decided to go see what was happening at Josie’s at 9. She had stood in the back waiting to see her familiar face. It was 9:15 when he walked in- disheveled suit and all. Lucy’s heart broke at seeing Matthew this way. He was doing what he loved but at what price? He just looked tired, done, as if trying to roll a boulder up a hill and never quite making it before the boulder rolled back down. The look on his face, the fact that he looked like life was hard enough for him already, is what made her stop in her tracks. Her heels clicked toward him until that moment. His red tinted glasses barely hung on to his ears and nose, his 5 o’clock shadow was growing fuzzier, and his steps were sluggish to the bar despite his cane being there to support him.   
Dana went back to the booth she had slid out of and grabbed a napkin. She knew how to make him feel better, and it wasn’t her reappearance in his life that would do it. She took a napkin and borrowed a pen from a barmaid, etching the following on to it: ⠼⠋⠚⠊⠀⡺⠀⠼⠙⠋⠞⠓⠀⡎⠞  
Taking the napkin in hand, she began her walk towards Matthew once again. This time, she got all the way next to him and ordered a drink: “Moscow Mule, please.” While one hand was sliding over a five-dollar bill, the other reached over to Matthew and put the napkin on his lap.   
“I wouldn’t order that.”  
Lucy was hearing Matthew’s voice for the first time in a while “Why’s that?”  
“Not to talk trash, but, it’s just watered down beer with a lime in it.”  
“Alright.” Lucy smiled, “Guess I’ll just have a beer.”  
It all turned to shit when Lucy had to rip herself away from the situation. When she got her beer, she had no idea if he had recognized her or not. A more rational mind wouldn’t have. Matthew Murdock might. She knew she shouldn’t wish him to recognize her, but Lucy couldn’t help herself.   
When her beer arrived she had no other reason to stay. Walking away, Lucy wanted to scream. He was right there, waiting for her. But how could she stay and claim to care for him all at once? If she stayed with him he would be in worse standing than if she let him be.   
Before walking out of Josie’s, she turned around and saw he was facing her from across the establishment with a tick of his head to the side.   
As Lucy walked down the street to hail a cab she couldn’t help but have that pesky saying floating in her mind and slithering its way between her lips “If you love someone…”


	13. Zorro and Elena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! I know! It's been a while! I didn't mean to take so long but I got so busy and had a birthday in the mean time :)

Shelby Fromme was behind the counter at Little Miss Donuts, Sinatra’s ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ twinkled its tune in the background of the picturesque shop. Walking into the morning bakery was a stark contrast from the bustling grey streets of New York. On the north end of Hell’s Kitchen, it was a small detour for the up and coming defense attorneys Matthew Murdock and Franklin Nelson.  
“Shelby!” Foggy smiled upon walking in, the golden and pastel pink aura welcoming his senses.  
“Hey, Foggy.” The shop girl smiled, waiting at the register for them to queue up “Can I get you the usual?”  
“If you will.” He smiled, giving an all too cavalier nod.  
As the shop girl with the forest brown eyes started tying her apron to her, Matt leaned in to ask Foggy the same question he did every day.  
“What’s-?”  
“It’s blue today. Electric.”  
“huh.”  
“Yeah. Looks bad ass.”  
“Thanks, guys.” Shelby smiled, pleased her new hair color was getting such a reception. “Had to bargain with the owner to keep it. Next week I’m gonna have to be more thematic with my colors.” Shelby leaned over the counter, grinning over at the lawyers. “How’s your mornings been so far?” This was Lucy’s only chance to really check in with her old friends.  
“Well you know what the life of a bachelor is like in New York,” Foggy replied smartly  
“Rent overdue?”  
Foggy snapped his fingers and Matt smiled, laughing a little.  
“You know, Shelby, I can’t help but wonder, what perfume is that?” Matt tilted himself over his cane slightly, smiling charmingly at the girl loading their box of Monday morning treats with an extra croissant and apple turnover.  
Despite the drifting aromas of fresh bread and caramelizing sugar, Matthew couldn’t help but notice her perfume pierce through it with its freshness. It held hints of freshly cut grass, green tea, and mint.  
“Oh, you like it? It’s uh Herba Fresca by Guerlain. I’ve had it for ages and I thought I lost it in the move.”  
“I’m glad you didn’t.”  
Shelby smiled, blushing as she ducked her head to close the box of goodies.

“Unbelievable.” Foggy shook his head as they exited the shop.  
“What?”  
“It’s like you can’t even help yourself.”  
“Look, Foggy, when a man thinks a woman is very attractive,”  
“You’re blind, Matt.”  
“Aw, thanks, I almost forgot, buddy.”  
They walked a few paces before Foggy piped up “Well she is cute.”  
“How cute?”  
“On a scale of…what are the last two attractive women you remember seeing?”  
“Uh…that girl from He-Man and…I think I can still remember Pamela Anderson.”  
“That’s not really her style but she’s more on the Pamela Anderson plane of reality.”  
“As in?”  
“As in she isn’t animated, doofus.”  
“Hey!” Matt laughed “Words matter.”  
“Let’s cross here.” Foggy guided Matthew to a right angle turn to cross the street. “Anyway, how was last night for you, you scoundrel? You left early on me.”  
“Oh yeah, well,” Matt tilted his head and fixed his tie, hoping he wasn’t being too revealing “She was very…rough.”  
“Ay Papi, tell me more.”  
“You’re a pervert, Fog.” Matt laughed, his head shifted down.

In all honesty, Matt’s recounting of his night wasn’t too far from the truth. He had been with a girl and she fought very roughly.

The night started out pretty typically for Matt Murdock. He’d been in his office, running his fingers over the napkin that had been dropped in his lap by a strange woman that had the voice of a friend and the odor of a tea leaf. The braille written on them wasn’t perfect. It was more for a computerized version of braille than written braille, so it took pinch more effort on Matthew’s part to figure out it was the address of an abandoned storing facility in Hell’s Kitchen. After that, it was just a matter of donning his black pajama pants and jumping over to the location to do a bit of reconnaissance.

The trouble came five minutes in.

Typically, when the Masked man patrolled the area, he would hear multiple calls for help but he’d have to choose one to save. Making that decision meant he was always gripped with knowing 99% of those cries of mercy will go unanswered. This time, his decision was clear.  
As Matthew was perched atop one of the highest buildings across the street from the facility, he heard a yell clear as a bell from the inside. Something inside of him snapped and he just knew he had to get to that voice despite the ten other men in the room. That instinct was as clear to him as was the primal need to eat or run straight into danger. Landing in the room without a sound, he just managed to stop himself from tearing the bad men apart to hear one of them with a heavy Russian accent say, “This will be quite the find. Matryoshka is actually the Krysa.” Matt didn’t know a lot of Russian, but he did know Matryoshka. It was a street name the Russian mob used to talk about a top official of the syndicate.  
“You have no idea what you’re doing, Abram, you’re way out of your depth.” Came the response with the sound of spit hitting skin. Matt could smell it. She spat out blood onto Abram’s face.   
The harsh sound of a slap came and Matthew cringed at the echo it made in his brain.  
“Abram,” A stronger voice told him “maybe she is right.” Mostly fearing what would happen to them if they were wrong.  
“Maybe I am the one who is right, Alexei.”  
“You better be prepared to bet your life on it.” Her voice was the only one without an accent.   
“We just caught you speaking into the phone with a Lieutenant. How do you defend yourself with this claim?” Alexei’s voice came back. He’d squared his shoulders and widened his stance over her. Three other men were holding her down, one by the hair and elbow, the other by the hips (a little too familiar for Matt’s taste), and the other held her wrists with one hand and the point of a knife stuck by her throat with his right hand.  
“It’s just a joke,” Matryoshka’s heartbeat was fluttering despite her cool demeanor “my brother Samuel. It’s a game we used to play as children. He was the Lieutenant Sherriff. I was the Native coming into his room and destroying it. Kind of backward if you think of it for too long but what do you want me to say? We were like six and our father loved John Wayne.”  
“Don’t spit on John Wayne’s name!”  
“I spit on yours.” She spat on his shoe. Abram was getting drenched “Why would you doubt me like this when all I have ever done for you is bring you higher?”  
“No, the only ones you’ve brought up are Anatoly and Vladimir.”  
“In more ways than one.” Another voice rang out.  
“Who the fuck asked you, Bogdan?!” All three of them exclaimed.  
There was some nervous shifting during a long pause. Matthew could tell the men were ready to do some serious damage to her. “Vitaly, matches.”  
“Excuse me?” Matryoshka sounded infuriated, but her heart gave away that she was terrified. Something more than that, Matt could sense that she was anxious. As if she was waiting for something.  
“You tell us the truth and you can keep your…middle finger, Genevieve.” That name sounded awfully familiar to Matt. Wasn’t that the woman that brought Lilly Tyler to them? Maybe she was worth getting information from.  
“I’ll show you what I’ll do with that finger if you fail.”  
The striking of the match worked for Matt like the gunshot at the beginning of a race. He leaped into action and knocked down Vitaly with his lit match. This caused the other three holding down Genevieve to loosen their grips in shock and enough time for her to reach behind her and elbow one in the jaw, distancing herself to the outer rim of the fight. One kick here, a knee to the groin there, and the swing of a few punches there and the masked vigilante was nose to nose with the mother of the Russian mafia, her cronies bent over in pain and varying states of consciousness around them. Instead of fighting like Matthew expected, she let out a sigh of relief and smiled, “It took you long enough to step in, Zorro.”


	14. Jumping the Shark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late. Wanted to make it perfect for you guys!

A foot away, a block away, crossing the street through a back alley, another block away, feet pounding on the pavement, ragged breaths, his hand is sweaty holding hers, pulling her along. He finally found the silent spot with horrid acoustics and the perfect amount of witnesses. When he stopped, she didn’t. Her scent began invading his senses. Lemongrass. Mint. Green Tea. Freshly cut grass. She got closer. Her heart pounding gave way to a new set of instruments he’d learned to play a life’s worth ago.   
“Hey.” Her word barely registered as Matthew bowed his head, emotions running into physical sensations like letters on a wet book. The path of his footsteps gave way to a sense of inebriation and he found himself cornered between a dumpster and a wall, her presence ever encroaching.   
Taking a breath like a mad man on a mission for a purpose, he screamed. “WHO ARE YOU?”   
Dana took a step back and continued until her back reached the wall parallel to Matthew’s. “I’m on your side.” She stated with the simplest smile.  
“What…what does that mean?” Matthew was collecting himself from appearances but was far from that on the inside.  
“We have the same target. I’m taking it on from the inside.”  
“Who are you?”  
“I’m someone who-“  
“No! Fuck that! What’s your name?”  
“The Russians call me Matryoshka…You’ll know me as Blackbird.”  
“I-I know you! Don’t fucking lie to me!”  
“Matthew, listen, you’d know I’m telling the truth.” Her voice was quieter.  
“Blackbird? That doesn’t mean anything to me.”  
“You’re the smart one, aren’t you? You’ll figure it out.” Her feet began a rhythm away from him, towards where people lived. “Thanks for the rescue.” She tentatively spoke over her shoulder, afraid to face him more than she already had.

Lucy finally had her shot to reconcile with Matthew. It was Dana’s cowardice and Genevieve’s grip of shame on her that carried her away, back to the high-rise on the outskirts of Hell’s Kitchen and into the secretive arms of the Russian mob.

That had been a week ago. 

In the next seven days, The Man Without Fear had found himself in a dumpster tracing a lead to the missing boy, employed a young woman with a shady past to be a desk secretary, recruited the help of a nurse and endangered her life, and successfully defended a murderer to a hung jury. Within those seven days, he’d heard about a woman in a mask doing the job for him. It eased the nightly workload, but he couldn’t help having the anxiety that they were carrying out the same ethics in the identical line of work. There hadn’t been a body yet, but Matthew figured it was only a matter of time before she left behind more than just a black feather at a crime scene. 

Blackbird

It was the name that pulled through his mind anytime he got the chance. What did it mean? A cryptic familiar. A woman with a cause. An ever present shadow. She said she was working on the inside, but from what he heard about her damages, they seemed to be exterior efforts. Why would she jeopardize her standings inside an organization by so blatantly going after it? 

On the seventh day, he found a package at his desk with the letters inscribed in braille on a tissue paper ‘Sincerely yours’. A long feather was wrapped around it. Beneath the message was a small parcel no bigger than a phone. Unwrapping it, Matthew clicked on the parcel’s content and a song went on playing on the Walkman. Who owned a Walkman anymore? Michael Jackson’s ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ echoed from the headphones that came with it. Skipping over the song, the second to queue up was ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ by Lenny Kravitz. Matthew was confused. What kind of gift was this? Is this what vigilantism had gone to? Do each other’s’ work and get each other gifts when it Masked Hero Appreciation Day came along? The songs followed after each other in this order:

3\. ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis Presley  
4\. ‘About A Girl’ by Nirvana  
5\. ‘You Learn’ by Alanis Morissette

It hit Matthew like a ton of bricks why she had sent this to him. He was being hunted by a very careful predator. He ripped himself out of his office without a second thought and went to the receptionist’s desk “Karen!”   
“Morning to you too, Matt.”  
“Did you see anyone drop this off on my desk?”  
“Can’t say I did. I think it was there when I came in. As far as I know, you’re the only person who’s gone in or out of your office since I got here. Why? Is something wrong?” Karen’s eyebrows scrunched together and she made to stand up.   
“No. It’s fine. I just…wanted to thank them for returning my…Walkman.”  
“Those are still around?”  
“Let’s not be so judgmental against the blind man, alright, Karen?” He played it off, walking back to his office.

“Oh!” He heard Karen say and he stopped in his tracks, loosening his tie and adjusting his glasses. “The girl from the donut place came by earlier. Said she didn’t see you or Foggy come in today and that it was a little odd so she came by with a few pastries. She went into your office to set aside a donut for you. Something about it needing to be protected from Foggy? I don’t know. You weren’t there so Foggy let her go in to leave you one.”  
“Did she have some weird colored hair?”  
“Yeah. Pastel pink. It was really nicely done. Looked like one of those wigs that beauty students work on…who is she?”  
Matt shrugged “Just Shelby being Shelby. Don’t worry about it. Thanks for the information, Karen.” He gave her a small smile and decided to go pay Ms. Shelby Fromme a visit to her place of employment.  
Unfortunately, upon his arrival there, Matthew was informed that Shelby had been laid off (“And she didn’t mind cutting in her last paycheck with some of my product, too.” The curmudgeon of a shopkeeper didn’t forget to add).  
“Well is there any way I can find her? An address?”  
With a heavy sigh, the man shrugged, as if he empathized with Matthew’s struggle. “Yeah, sure. Want me to write it down for you?”  
“No, won’t really help. Can you just tell me aloud?”  
“Alright. Let me pull it up in our records, eh?”  
Lumbering out and then back in he came out with a small notepad looking even smaller in his paws. “Alright. Here it is,” He rattled off the address, looking over at him expectantly “Want me to call you a cab or something?”  
“I can find my way. Thank you.” Matthew was familiar with the location. It was just a few blocks away from where one of the worst nights of his life had happened.   
Knowing it would be a long walk through the city, Matt abstained from a cab drive. He needed time to think, to let himself mull over everything that had happened and what was to come. There was a very real chance that Shelby was Blackbird. This fact he held to a hundred percent certainty. What he was trying to refrain himself from jumping to was the connection between Genevieve Westcott and Shelby Fromme. Shelby was a sweet girl. He remembered visiting the café once and noticing she felt depressed. When asking her about her morning so far she’d responded that she had found a rat lying on its side and that it had bitten her when she tried to put it in a box to send to a veterinarian. Foggy had been more concerned with her being bitten (as any rational person would) and Shelby had brushed it off. She’d seen an E.R nurse and gotten a brief scolding. Shelby’s mood was brought down knowing the rat might be out there suffering from a broken leg. He just couldn’t see this girl being the same woman who had ordered the kidnapping of dozens of women and made a profit of human trafficking. What was worth noting was Genevieve did seem to have a human side. Though Matthew had only met her once after saving her from mutinous Russian thugs, he knew it was her who had carried Lilly Tyler to him and Foggy for safety. It seemed like Ms. Westcott was trying to build a case against herself. Or maybe (and as Matthew thought it became clearer) Genevieve was trying to build a case against the Ranskahov brothers and jump ship from the Russians. Word on the street was the Reds couldn’t hold their own since The Masked Man jumped into the foray. It was also completely possible that Westcott wanted to give him and Foggy the Russian case and to let others keep pulling the string to whoever was backing the Yakuza, Russians, and Chinese.   
Matthew’s thoughts were about to perch on to Lucy Clarke when he arrived to the place she died. Years ago, in the raw emotion of the moment, arriving on the scene, Matthew wasn’t sure if feeling the heat radiating off of Lucy’s car from the bonfire it had become had become a moment in his life worse than when he’d cradled his father’s head in that alley smelling of an unloaded magazine years ago. She deserved better. Matthew knew he’d never forgive himself by letting her go to a party without anyone there. He should’ve prioritized her, especially since who he prioritized above her was the woman who would encourage him to kill a man in his own house that same night.   
Matthew leaned down and gripped the tree, still bent from the impact. He could faintly smell the burnt bark and his fingernails dug into it. Matthew straightened himself when he realized people were beginning to get anxious around him. He was only three more blocks from the location. Could it be just a coincidence how close Shelby lived from the incident?   
By the time he had gotten to the building, it was dark out. Matt couldn’t hear anyone in the building so he sat by its steps, rolling his cane between his fingers like a fire stick. A few cars came by but they were lost or on their way downtown. It was an hour and a half in when there was a commotion in the dumpster aisle next to the building.  
“Baby! Chill! This jacket costs more than your rent.” A voice he knew all too well came out from it. Turk Barrett, full-time low life was pinned to a wall by a masked vigilante again.  
“Really? ‘Cause it looks like shit.” A harsh voice came out, a woman’s voice in a whisper.  
“I ain’t the one to be critiquing Yeezy, you feel?”  
“So help me God,-“  
“Alright, alright, what do you want?”  
“Where is Fisk hiding?”  
Matthew’s radar went off like a blaze in a fireworks factory. Fisk was the name Prohaska had given him before taking a spare piece of metal through his brain.  
“You think he’s gonna tell me?” A pained yelp came from him. “Bitch! My arm!”  
“I know what I did.” She growled, “And if you don’t want it snapped, I’m gonna get an address out of you.”  
“Man, what’s your feathery ass gonna do with it anyway?”  
Blackbird.  
“I’m going to kill him.”  
“Are you, though?” SNAP  
“Broke your arm, didn’t I?”  
Barrett was wailing now, having slumped to the ground. “I told you! I don’t know!” He was about to cry. Matthew was about to let them go uninterrupted if it wasn’t for his conscience.   
“Shelby!” Matthew turned the corner and made his presence known “He doesn’t know.”  
“Ma-What the fuck are you doing here?” She round-house kicked Barrett in the head, knocking him out cold. He was slumped against the wall still holding his snapped forearm.  
“Stopping you from hurting an innocent man. What are you doing? How do you know who Fisk is?”  
“Innocent? Him?!”  
“How do you know who Fisk is?”  
“Say that louder and we’re both dead. Let’s go inside.” Shelby linked arms with him and helped him into her apartment. “I’d like to change out of this thing. It’s seriously uncomfortable.”  
He tapped his glasses.  
“I know, just being courteous.”  
Shelby disappeared into her bedroom, changing out of the black latex and Kevlar suit. It proved durable against crooks and their knives and the hood and cape made of raven feathers showed itself to be effectively intimidating. Her mask, however, lead something to be desired from it. The nose of the mask was made of a tough material to double as a nose protection and a good stabbing tool, but it looked ridiculous and difficult to take off. After some struggling, Shelby made her way out in the most decent pajamas she owned.  
“Why are you here, Matthew?”  
“I think you can guess.” He pulled out the Walkman and let it play.  
“You got my message.”  
“Crafty.”  
“I like to think so.”  
“So who is it?”  
“You’re not going to believe this when I tell you.”  
“Who?”  
“SHIELD.”  
“The Avengers agency?”  
“They’re a little more than that.”  
“I figured. How do you know they’re on to me?”  
“Because I work there. Or did. I tendered my resignation two weeks ago.”  
“I don’t understand. Doesn’t SHIELD make its business using and housing vigilantes?”  
“Unofficially, yes.”  
“So why leave?”  
“Because I wasn’t always Blackbird. I used to be somebody else before they recruited me. After the Incident, I couldn’t think of a better way to make sure no one ever got hurt. Everyone lost someone during the Incident, I know that. But I wasn’t about to feel hopeless in the face of adversity ever again.”  
“That’s a good sales pitch they used.”  
“That and the possibility of meeting Tony Stark.”  
“Uh-huh.”  
“Who wouldn’t, right?”  
“Back to the story?”  
“Right, sorry. So, here’s this person telling me I can save lives and use my philosophies for good. I just needed a bit of training.”  
“Philosophies?”  
“They found me from my public works.”  
“Okay.”  
“So they assign me to a small chapter based in Hell’s Kitchen. They’ve got them everywhere in New York since the Incident. In every borough, there’s a small division focused on rebuilding and restoring the city. The director taking responsibility for some fuckups, right?”  
“Sounds good. So why did you leave?”  
“I’ve been working there for about five years. We were planning something big. The mobs had gone quiet and the crime committed by them to each other dropped while gang on civilian crime rose. We figured that was some cause for concern. An alliance between the gangs is the last thing we need. In Hell’s Kitchen, the rates were the worst. The Italians and the Irish were pushed into their rat holes while the Russians became the most active. So the plan was to infiltrate the Russian mafia and gather information on them from the inside, climb the ranks and implode the whole operation.”  
“And they wanted you to walk in with the bombs strapped to your chest.”  
“I don’t mind that. At least I didn’t at first. My qualm with the plan came when they would only sign off on it within the correct window of time if I killed their main informant and took his place within the organization.”  
“You didn’t, right?”  
There was a pause. It wasn’t just pregnant with the judgment Shelby was getting from him, but with Matt’s dreaded anticipation of the answer.  
“I had to. I slit his throat in front of Anatoly and Vladimir.” Shelby was about to lose her demeanor. “And I’d promised him a deal…Matthew, they changed me. When I did it I figured it was one life for tens of thousands. But Bershov’s death haunts me every minute I’m asleep and every waking hour. I can’t pass a fountain without seeing his blood stain the porcelain.”  
She felt his hand on hers and Shelby’s head snapped up. “Matthew, please forgive me.”  
“It’s not my place to do that.”  
She pulled her hand away carefully and cleared her throat of the sobs she’d gone through internally.  
“I took on the identity of Genevieve Westcott after that. American born, half Russian mobster. I got their trust quickly and I became the Russian crime syndicate. Anatoly and Vladimir just liked occupying themselves with the color of the cabs or different ways to kill a man. Someone had to actually drive the car. I consistently proved myself a good leader and I manipulated exterior events to stop me from going through with a plan.”  
“Like that night on the docks with those women.”  
“Like with Lilly Tyler.” Shelby nodded “Every time I take on a new identity, I’m different. I’m somehow morally changed. I can’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore.” She paused “I left SHIELD when I knew I was too far in with the Russians. I wouldn’t be getting any trouble from SHIELD because they can’t make their presence known publicly. If they say anything about any sort of program, any future operation will be blown. That’s why I started planning on Blackbird. It’s an old reference to friends I had a long time ago. The name reminds me who I am.”  
“I understand.”  
“I know you do. You don’t think I know who you are?”  
“You’re smart and you’re from an intelligence agency. I wouldn’t put it passed you to know.”  
“You’re a good guy, Matt.”  
“I’m just a decent guy in black underwear at night.”  
“You’re a good guy.” It meant more than what she said. Many people were shitting on the man in black, saying he was a criminal. Technically, he is. It didn’t come often that Matthew was told he was a hero. He was the good guy. Maybe that’s why he continued his work as a lawyer. At least there he knew he was doing the right thing.  
“So are you.” Matthew gave a tight smile, emotional “So what do you want with Fisk?”  
“He’s the head of it all. The silence of the inter-gang violence. The reason for the rise of gang-civilian crime. He’s the head of the snake. I haven’t gotten a good read on him. Never seen him.”  
“That’s why you were trying to beat his location out of Turk.”  
“Yeah. Good for nothing.”  
“Usually, yeah.”  
“He works for Fisk but like most of those under Fisk’s thumb, he doesn’t even know Fisk’s first name. So what do you know?”  
“Nothing you haven’t told me. I don’t exactly have the same resources as you do. Now about SHIELD, you told me they are on to me? What do I do?”  
“I don’t know. I can’t cover for you anymore. I can’t go about erasing shit off of computers. Just be careful. Don’t run into alleys throwing your cane to the side all willy-nilly. They’ve got eyes on the street where most people don’t think to look.”  
“Did you just say willy-nilly?”  
“Deal with it, Murdock.” She laughed, leaning back casually.  
A scent wafted in with her laugh that made Murdock smile uneasily. “I’ll see you around, alright? Don’t ask for permission to join me on nightly runs. I might need you.” Freshly cut grass, green tea, lemongrass, and mint were slowly invading his senses.  
“You sure you want to go?” Matt had risen from his chair. “It’s late.”  
“Lucy, I’m the Man Without Fear.”  
“Fine, go. Be that way.” Shelby didn’t notice the misnomer. 

Walking out of that flat and getting a cab back to his, Matt’s thoughts zoomed about his skull. Had she not noticed he called her the wrong name? Of course she had. She’s a trained spy. She’s not supposed to miss a single detail. It left him to a chilling conclusion he wasn’t ready to face. Maybe the thoughts he’d had at the back of his mind the entire time were true- the kind of thoughts you didn’t play with too much because it would either get your hopes up or lead you down a dangerous path or some uncharted cocktail of both. “Lucy Clarke is alive.”


End file.
